60 KING CHARLES I
fully against the great men who had seized Church endowments. He repaired the ruined churches and the ruined stipends and chose devout and learned bishops. He determined that the country should know internal peace and stability, and he saw that this was impossible as long as it remained a Tom Tiddler's ground for needy courtiers and adventurers. He protested strongly against the fashion of paying English officials with Irish lands and money, he cleared the Irish seas of pirates, he started the flax industry, and he trained a really efficient army of 10,000 men, the only army the King could command in the United Kingdom. Under his rule official corruption was severely dealt with, Customs dues more than doubled, and Ireland, instead of being an expense to England, was actually sending in yearly increasing sums to the Exchequer. Wentworth, after three years of strenuous government, came to England to defend his policy to the King and excuse himself from the many accusations of tyranny levelled against him. Charles supported him in all and against all. Yet Wentworth returned to Dublin depressed and foil of foreboding. He knew that he had roused powerful hatreds in Ireland among the magnates whose power he had bridled, and in England among the courtiers whose grants he had stopped, and he feared (as he wrote to the King) " the dark setting of a storm." He longed for some honour as a mark of Charles's support, but Charles did not like to have his favours demanded ; he considered his open championship of the Deputy encouragement enough. The tragedy in these two men's relationship was that they did not really trust each other.